The success of a company depends essentially on the requirement that demands on goods and services be fulfilled precisely, cost-efficiently, and on time. Therefore, many companies make use of a supply chain management system to control and optimize their production and delivery processes.
Supply chain management may include the process of coordinating the flow of goods, services, information and finances between the involved parties, such as manufactures, suppliers, wholesalers, retailers, and consumers. This process may include, among others, order processing, information feedback, and timely delivery of the ordered goods and services.
Processes within supply chain management may include checking whether a quantity of products ordered by a customer is available at some location, for example, warehouses and production plants, at a given time. This is denoted as an Available-to-Promise (ATP) check. Various ways of selecting particular locations and checking the availability of products at these locations may be defined using a number of rules. These rules are denoted as “ATP rules.” The rules to be applied may be determined based on the particular order which is to be ATP checked.
Sometimes the quantity of products ordered can be met only by combining product availabilities at multiple locations together. In such cases, the products may be shipped from these multiple locations directly to the customer.
In some cases, however, the products from one or more locations may be shipped to a particular location where the products are processed before they are shipped to the customer. This process is denoted as a consolidation process. One reason for using a consolidation process may be, for example, to send the ordered products together in one delivery to the customer. Another reason may be in cases of foreign trade or export business, for example, if only a particular location has the capability to prepare export licenses.